Recent archaeological find,
thought by some to be the
biblical palace built by
King David, stirs
controversy over the
right of the Jewish
people to claim
Jerusalem.

In what many archaeologists hail as the potential find of the century, remains of a massive structure dating to the time of King David have been discovered in the heart of biblical Jerusalem.

Eilat Mazar, the Israeli archaeologist leading the excavation, has suggested that it may, in fact, be the palace built by David as described in the Bible.

The discovery has shaken the already contentious field of biblical archaeology to its roots: For the last few years, a number of respected archaeologists n most prominently Israel Finkelstein, chairman of Tel Aviv University"s archaeology department and author of the 2001 best-seller The Bible Unearthed n have argued that the biblical accounts of Jerusalem as the seat of a great and united monarchy under the rule of David and Solomon are false. If Mazar"s hypothesis proves right, it would go a long way toward proving Finkelstein and the others wrong.